The BU bus system is inefficient and the solution is simple
Students are outraged. Someone even created a fake BU Bus Twitter to vent their frustration
Last Thursday, my friend and I decided to go to FitRec.
We had put off these plans for weeks, largely because neither of us liked making the trek from Bay State to West Campus, but we eventually found a date and time which worked for both of us.
Five o’clock rolls around and we decide to catch the BU Bus to StuVi. At this point there were exactly three buses servicing both BU’s Charles River Campus and Medical Campus.
The BU Bus Tracker app thankfully told us a bus was approaching the stop at Silber Road. But we also had less than two minutes to get there from our dorms.
Photo by Kalman Zabarsky for Boston University Photography
We frantically ran to Silber and managed to catch the bus, joining a procession of 30 students piling on who had presumably waited at the stop for a long period of time.
The bus was packed.
I nearly lost my balance as I stood crammed between other students on the metal platform that rotates as the bus turns. By the time the bus arrived at StuVi I was annoyed and confused.
Why does the university bus system fail to meet the needs of the students it services, especially at a prime time of the day?
The inefficiency of the BU Bus is well known.
Ask any student who takes it regularly and they will recall a similar experience to mine, either barely catching it in time and being crammed next to countless other students or failing to catch it at all.
For the amount of money we are paying in tuition, this inefficiency is inexcusable.
Simply look at Twitter, where students frequently share their stories of trying to catch a bus
The solution to BU’s bus crisis is simple – add more buses to the rotation and split them up between the Charles River and Medical campuses.
There are simply too few buses to meet the needs of the students who take them.
BU generally has somewhere between three to five buses in service, barely enough to adequately service the Charles River campus, let alone all of BU.
The buses which drive down Commonwealth are frequently “Out of Service” for no conceivable reason, forcing students to wait for the next one.
This can take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, making the buses unreliable to transport students between classes which is arguably their most important role.
Because of this, a student going from West campus to East campus in a 10 minute passing period is usually better off running to class.
This is unacceptable.
The other major problem with the BU Bus system is the circuitous route the buses take.
The distance from BU East to South End alone is farther than the entire length of the Charles River campus. This means that, at any given time, there’s a small chance of actually finding a BU bus on the main campus, let alone one approaching your location from the right direction.
Only a small portion of students actually need to go between both campuses on a regular basis, yet all of BU’s buses go out of their way to service them.
This makes no sense.
Someone even created a fake BU Bus Twitter handle to vent their frustration
When you talk to students who use the bus system frequently or look at the overcrowded buses and bus stops, it’s easy to see BU has a problem.
The network of buses simply isn’t large enough or efficient enough to meet the needs of BU students. Students paying over $60,000 a year shouldn’t be expected to frantically run between classes because of a faulty system of transportation.
But the BU Bus system does not live up to the high standards set by our other facilities.
This problem can be addressed — and must be addressed — by adding more buses and splitting up what portions of BU they cover.